Soros Eyes Secretaries

History's most notorious Georgian-turned-Russian, the politically astute Joseph Stalin once remarked, "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."

The lesson has not been lost on the increasingly notorious Hungarian-cum-American George Soros.

A group backed by Soros is gearing up to steal the 2012 election for President Obama and congressional Democrats by installing left-wing Democrats as secretaries of state across the nation. From such posts, secretaries of state can help tilt the electoral playing field.

This is, of course, the same Soros, the same hyperpolitical left-wing philanthropist who makes no secret of his intention to destroy capitalism. In an interview with Der Spiegellast year, Soros said European-style socialism "is exactly what we need now. I am against market fundamentalism. I think this propaganda that government involvement is always bad has been very successful -- but also very harmful to our society."

The vehicle for this planned hijacking of democracy is a below-the-radar non-federal "527" group called the Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn't have to disclose them publicly until well after the election.

It was revealed during a panel discussion at the Democratic Party's convention last year that the Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and Progressive insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups -- a kind of "vast left-wing conspiracy" to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits, including ACORN.

In the 2000 and 2004 elections, we saw the results of extreme Republican tactics to intimidate voters and steal the presidential election -- the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. Today, we watch as Republicans go to even greater extremes -- even carrying guns to town hall meetings. If they are willing to go to such extremes now, how far will they go on November 6, 2012 to steal the election from President Barack Obama? [emphasis added]

At the top of the SoS Project's slate of candidates for state-level secretary of state positions in 2010 is Minnesota's radically left-wing Mark Ritchie, a former community organizer whose cavalier attitude toward electoral fraud and whose shamelessly partisan conduct during the recount process cleared the way for Al Franken to steal last year's U.S. Senate election from then-Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). Ritchie was first elected Minnesota secretary of state in 2006. Franken and Obama, by the way, were endorsed last year by ACORN Votes, ACORN's federal political action committee.

In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN PAC endorsed Ritchie, a longtime ACORN ally, and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to Ritchie's campaign included liberal philanthropists Soros, Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone that breeds Marxist agitators. One article on Ritchie's 2006 campaign website brags about the fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise that state's minimum wage.

The 2010 slate also includes California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, whom the group describes as "one of the most progressive Secretaries of State in the nation." Bowen was endorsed in her previous run by California ACORN PAC.

SoS Project is also endorsing Jocelyn Benson, candidate for secretary of state in Michigan, whom it lauds as an "[e]lection law scholar and community organizer."

Benson is a candidate ACORN would love. The bio SoS Project provides credits Benson with running a 2004 "voter protection campaign in 21 states, deploying 17,000 trained election law lawyers." Last year in Michigan, she helped to lead the fight to stop the Republican secretary of state "from disenfranchising voters who were victims of home foreclosures."

Assuming the desperately mismanaged Michigan continues to exist through Election Day next year, count on the desperately evil ACORN endorsing Benson.

To the Secretary of State Project, Republican secretaries of state are always Snidely Whiplashes trying to undermine progressive Dudley Do-Rights. SoS claims to advance "election protection" but only backs Democrats, religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).

Harris in particular is presented as the poster child for GOP election-stealing and vote suppression as the left tries to keep alive its fantasy that George W. Bush stole the 2000 election in Florida with the creative collaboration of Bull Connor, the Ku Klux Klan, Diebold, Blackwater, and the CIA.

The secretary of state candidates the group endorses all sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues that we routinely hear from ACORN: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating fascist.

The group was co-founded in July 2006 by James Rucker, formerly director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org Political Action and Moveon.org Civic Action. Rucker is also a co-founder of Color of Change, a race-baiting left-wing hate group.

Its website claims, "A modest political investment in electing clean candidates to critical Secretary of State offices is an efficient way to protect the election." Indeed. Political observers know that a relatively small amount of money can help swing a little-watched race for a state office few people understand or care about.

The strategic targeting of the SoS Project yielded astounding results in 2008 and 2006.

In 2008, SoS Project-backed Democrats Linda McCulloch (Montana), Natalie Tennant (West Virginia), Robin Carnahan (Missouri), and Kate Brown (Oregon) won their races. Only Carnahan was an incumbent. The Center for Public Integrity reported that the group performed this electoral feat in the 2008 election cycle with a mere $280,000.

In 2006, along with Minnesota's Ritchie, SoS Project-endorsed Jennifer Brunner (Ohio), who defied federal law last year by refusing to take steps to verify 200,000 questionable voter registrations, trounced her opponent, 55% to 41%. Democrats supported by the group also won that year in New Mexico, Nevada, and Iowa. The group claims it spent about $500,000 in that election cycle.

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